This app will keep diarrhoea at bay

For those who are gastronomically adventurous, travelling is hardly any fun without savouring the succulent local dishes and drinks.

Even as they soak themselves in the fresh flavours of a new destination, researchers have now developed an app to help travellers avoid what's commonly known as traveller's diarrhoea, a condition that affects an estimated 10 million travellers each year.

Called 'Can I Eat This?', the app asks travellers to select the country they are visiting and answer a few questions about the item they are thinking of consuming.

They need to answer questions such as whether the food item or the beverage was bought from a street vendor and whether it was cooked.

"With 'Can I Eat This?', you can be more confident that your food and drink choices would not make you spend your international trip in the bathroom," informed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a US government public health agency that developed the app.

The app tells a prospective traveller to India that if a drink contains ice it is better to avoid it because, as the app explains, ice is usually made with tap water which can be unsafe in some countries, including India.